heartbeatlisted

# The dead-man's switch A scheduled job cannot report its own absence. Every other check runs *inside* the thing being checked, so when the thing stops, so do they — and a stopped check is indistinguishable from a passing one. This skill installs the one mechanism that inverts that: an external monitor that expects to hear from the job, and speaks when it does not. It is a skill rather than a note because its failure modes are silent by construction. A check that was never created, a grace copied from a neighbour, a URL pinged by hand before the job existed — each leaves a green dashboard over an unwatched job, which is worse than an obviously absent one. ## Context - Project root: !`git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null || pwd` - Scheduled jobs here: !`find . -maxdepth 4 \( -name '*.timer' -o -name '*.service' -o -name 'backup*.sh' -o -name 'offsite*' -o -name 'crontab*' \) -not -path '*/node_modules/*' -not -path '*/.git/*' | head -20` - Ping already wired: !`grep -rl -e 'hc-ping' -e 'HEARTBEAT_URL' -e 'healthchecks' . --exclude-dir=node_modules --exclude-dir=.git 2>/dev/null | head -10 || echo NONE` - Doppler coordinates: !`cat doppler.yaml 2>/dev/null || echo "(no doppler.yaml — ask /doppler for this project's shard and config)"` ## Two channels, two questions The distinction below is the whole design, and conflating the two is the mistake this skill exists to prevent. | Channel | Answers | Fires when | |---|---|---| | the verdict (mail, report, log) | did the j